


just another normal tuesday

by thearcherballet



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/F, Modern AU, Neighbors AU, because fuck jkr that’s why, there’s a cat, they’re all girls
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-27
Updated: 2017-12-27
Packaged: 2019-02-22 10:25:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13164975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thearcherballet/pseuds/thearcherballet
Summary: It really was supposed to be just another normal Tuesday.(In which Lily was home sick, a cat takes over her home, and she meets her upstairs neighbor who’s actually kinda cute)





	just another normal tuesday

**Author's Note:**

> i had this idea earlier this week and i couldn’t sleep tonight and i just wrote this. @jkr fuck you. also, no editing, we post this without revising Like Men.

Nothing interesting happened on a Tuesday. This was a true fact, but don’t check Lily on that. The real reason why she believed that, was because on that particular Tuesday she was staring at the ceiling and groaning to herself out of boredom.

When she’d gotten the flu over the weekend, she thought it would be over by Monday. But then monday came and she’d coughed one too many times during a meeting and her boss had taken one look at her and told her to go to the doctor and go home.

But she’d gotten over it by Tuesday morning, and now she was bored out of her mind. She’d bingewatched the new season of The Crown, which had left her in a sort of morose manner. She guessed she could make some food, but one look at the nearly empty fridge told her it was hopeless unless she wanted to eat half a stick of butter wrapped in a slice of ham. No, things weren’t that desperate.

She was about to phone her favorite Chinese restaurant when a yowl on her balcony made her jump and drop her phone.

“Fuck!”

Lily quickly made sure her phone screen hadn’t cracked, relieved to see nothing of the sort. She slapped the takeout menu she’d been perusing on the kitchen counter. She walked over to her screen door, sliding it open to see where the noise had come from.

She didn’t know what she’d expected, but a fat tabby cat biting the leaves of her newly acquired cilantro plant wasn’t it.

Lily slowly approached it; she didn’t know if it was feral or some domesticated cat who’d wondered out of its home. “Hey there, cat,” she said in a higher voice, crouching a little towards it. She reached for the little plant rake Marlene had given her. _It’s usually called a garden fork_ , Marlene’s voice reminded her annoyingly in her head. _Shove it_ , Lily told Imaginary-Marlene.

Lily took the little rake to pet the cat from afar. The cat initially tensed at the intrusion, hissing lowly. Lily stepped back a little. “Sorry, cat. It’s just— you’re the intruder here, not me,” Lily reasoned. The cat then turned to look at Lily, its slitted yellow eyes meeting her green ones.

Its bushy tail swiveled from side to side. Then, it proceeded to make a run to the inside of Lily’s apartment. “Shit,” Lily yelped as she darted after the Demon Cat into her living room. “Stop,” she hopelessly exclaimed. “This is not your home!”

The cat was just prancing about Lily’s kitchen counters, testing which things it could push around until it fell. Lily made a grab for her sugar tin, which had almsot met its end on that fine Tuesday. “No, bad Demon Cat! Please leave my home,” she tried to plead.

The cat instead sat and stared her down. After heaving an exasperated sigh, Lily managed to discern a collar among the copious amounts of fur around the cat’s neck.

_Buttercup  
If found wandering about, please return to its owner as he’s not supposed to leave his home._

Lily couldn’t see the address, so it must’ve been on the other side of the tag. She went to hee fridge and set down the one slice of ham she had left in front of “Buttercup”. As he started to eat, she carefully turned the collar around so as to not disturb him too much.

_J. Potter  
#500 Downing_

500 Downing? Those were the prats living in the flat at the top floor, always being rowdy little shits.

Lily stared at the cat once more. “Can you manage not to trash my whole flat while I fetch your owner?”

Buttercup didn’t respond because he was a cat and didn’t understand her, nor he cared. But Lily took his silence as approval and hurriedly closed her screen door before grabbing her keys from the bowl at the entrance. She closed the door behind her and stomped to the lift, pressing the Up button with the urgency of someone in the precipice of disaster.

The lift took what felt like ages, during which Lily kept straining to hear if Buttercup was wrecking her humble abode. When the lift finally left her by the front door of the Potter flat, she took a second to gather herself, and then knocked. When she got no response, she knocked again more insistent and loud.

“Coming!” a voice inside called out. The door swung open to reveal an Indian girl around her age rubbing sleep from her eyes under her glasses. “Did Sirius order pizza before getting here?” she asked confused.

Lily flapped her arms about, looking up and down the hallway at no one. “Do I look like I’m delivering pizza?”

The girl, who really was only wearing some sleeping briefs, a tee with its sleeves cut out, and a sports bra underneath, frowned at Lily, trying to figure out what was happening. “Then, who are you?”

“I’m Lily Evans, I’m looking for a J. Potter?” Lily looked at the door with the 500 clearly marked on the front just to make sure she was in the right place. “Your cat is currently squatting in my home, two floors down, and I’m not looking for a new flatmate.”

That’s when the girl’s brain seemed to click, by the way her eyes widened and she clutched her sleep-tousled short black hair. “That little— let me get my keys, hold on.”

With that, she turned away from Lily and shut the door on Lily’s face. She came back with her keys and a squeaky toy in her hands. Lily pressed the button on the lift as Buttercup’s owner locked the door.

“I’m so sorry,” the girl said earnestly. “He doesn’t usually do that, I don’t know how he got there.”

“I found him in my balcony, so maybe he jumped down from yours?”

“Oh God, Remus probably forgot to close the balcony door after he watered the plants and left.”

“I guess...” Lily said as the lift gave a bing. “I gather you’re J. Potter?”

“Yes! My friends call me James, I’m so sorry, I’m still a bit sleepy,” James said looking pitiful. “I must look like a mess, I had practice really early this morning and came home and fell asleep right on the sofa,” she said. It explained the indents on her face and the tousled look.

“You’re fine,” Lily said just as the lift got to her floor. She didn’t bother to comment on her own attire of baggy sweatpants and sweatshirt to match with fluffy boots. She’d been sick and it was socially acceptable.

Lily opened the door to the apartment, James behind her looking out for Buttercup. “I left him in the kitchen eating the only slice of ham I had, hope that’s okay,” Lily said.

“That’s fine,” James said with a slight laugh.

They both entered the flat carefully: Lily because she didn’t want the cat to run away again, James because she was in a stranger’s home.

The cat wasn’t in the kitchen when they got there, so James squeezed the toy while calling out for the cat. “Buttercup, come out,” she sternly said.

A muffled crash came from within Lily’s bedroom, with Buttercup sauntering out from the direction of Lily’s closet. Buttercup completely ignored Lily and threw himself at James’s feet, purring like a machine. James picked him up with a groan, scolding him lovingly. “Why would you run away, Booboo? That wasn’t a nice thing to do, I could’ve been sleeping right now.”

Buttercup didn’t understand and instead licked her hands.

James rolled her eyes. She looked over at Lily in the way that a mother does another mother when her child is acting up in public. “Thank you so much for getting me and not kicking my cat out to the curb.”

Lily crossed her arms uncomfortably at the small bit of praise. “It’s nothing, if nothing it made me realize I need to get more groceries and that I’m the type of person who talks to animals like they’re human.”

James grinned at that and it truly was a delightful one that made Lily smile in response. “All right, I’ll be going now. Thanks again, and know that I’m just a few floors up if you ever need anything,” James said, walking to the door.

Lily shrugged it off.

James grabbed Buttercup’s paw and made it wave at Lily. “Say goodbye to pretty Ms. Lily,” James said. Buttercup meowed in annoyance.

Lily opened the door for them to hide her blush. “It was meeting you two,” she merely said and James laughed a little before saying one last goodbye. After she closed the door behind them, Lily couldn’t help but look through the peephole to see them get into the lift.

James’ smile didn’t drop as she stepped into it. To the contrary, it grew when James rest his head against the elevator wall. Lily didn’t realize she was also grinning until the lift closed.

—

After James left, Lily took on the task to clean up the mess the cat had left behind. Finishing that, she showered, still sort of trying to wrap her head around the events of the day.

It was as she was untangling her wet hair that she realized she’d forgotten to eat. With that in mind, she went back to where she’d left the takeout menu on her kitchen counter. Just going through the options had her empty stomach doing the Macarena.

She was deciding between the Beef and Pork Fried Rice when she heard a knock on her door. She looked down at her bathrobe and decided it was good enough to answer the door.

Lily looked through her peephole, stunned by the delivery person holding two bags’ worth of takeout Chinese. Did she order food and not even realize? One way to find out.

“Is this Lily Evans?”

“Yes,” she said, a frown on her face.

“I have your order,” the poor lad then extended the bags towards Lily.

“Is this paid for?”

“Yes, and the tip,” the boy confirmed. “Just sign here,” he said, handing Lily a slip of paper. She scribbled nonsense on it ang gave it back, thanking the boy before retreating back into her flat.

Upon opening the containers, she found herself salivating over both beef AND pork fried rice along with other delicacies.

But she clearly did not order this feast.

And so, for the second time on a Tuesday, she found herself knocking on James Potter’s door.

The look of surprise on James’ face didn’t fool Lily. Before James could say anything, Lily said: “So, I found myself all of a sudden with a lot of Chinese food, and was wondering if you had eaten anything and would want to join me?”

James smiled a wicked grin that Lily reciprocated. “I’m actually starving.”


End file.
